Dropbox Review

The service that made cloud storage pretty much, Dropbox still hasn't fallen victim to the usual trap for trailblazers, offering speed and ease of use. Its security leaves much to be desired, still, though, and it's a bit too cozy with Big Brother if you ask us. Read our Dropbox review for the details.

Since 2007, Dropbox has become one of the most well-known names in the SaaS industry. Behind that success is a focus on smart but simple solutions to file management, including the sync folder copied by most of the competition today.

While Google Drive appears to have snatched away its crown for total active users (800 million for Google; 500 million for Dropbox), there’s no question based on what we’re hearing from our readers that Dropbox still gets a lot right. That Dropbox still deserves recognition and a top place in any best cloud storage comparison chart.

Whether or not it should be at the top of that shortlist will depend on what you need from cloud storage and how much you’re willing to pay.

The service stays relevant with fast and reliable sync capabilities, integrates with Microsoft Office Online and has a nice notes app. The big problem with Dropbox is that it just isn’t budget friendly. Many of the best features that Dropbox is coming up with lately require a Dropbox Professional subscription, which costs $20 a month and only gets you 1TB of storage.

We’ll get into all the details over the course of our updated Dropbox review. Our focus here is the Dropbox personal plans. If you’re looking for a business solution, jump to our Dropbox Business review.

Even if you ultimately decide to go with another service detailed in our library of cloud storage reviews, you can still use Dropbox with a free 2GB account.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Pros:

Cons:

Features

85% - Very Good

Dropbox is designed both to increase your file storage capacity beyond the limits of your hard drive and to improve your productivity.

Like most cloud storage tools, it’s not designed to backup your hard drive. While you can use it for that purpose to an extent, a dedicated online backup tool works much better. Check our best online backup guide for suggestions.

Dropbox works by letting you copy files to a network of remote servers, which lets you access them from different devices and save hard drive space. You can upload files by moving them into a special file system folder called a sync folder. You can also upload them by logging into Dropbox through a supported browser or the Dropbox mobile app.

Clients can be installed for computers running Windows, Mac and Linux. We rank it among the best cloud storage for Linux options, in fact. Mobile apps are available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone.

You can connect as many devices as you want to your Dropbox account. With sync enabled, files will be shared in near real-time across each. Turn sync off using selective sync to save hard drive space.

We’ll get into sync later in this review, along with file sharing, which Dropbox also supports.

In addition to being perhaps the most capable cloud storage when it comes to sync reliability, the other main draw with Dropbox is its productivity features. While not quite on the same level as Google Drive (read our Google Drive review) when it comes to app integrations, Dropbox does give you a decent notes tool and it integrates with Office Online.

Dropbox Versioning

Dropbox also supports file versioning, although previous file versions are only kept for 30 days on a Dropbox Plus account. Dropbox Professional subscribers get 120 days.

Dropbox used to sell an extended versioning add-on that let you keep previous versions for a year, but recently discontinued that feature. If you need more, there are plenty of better options. Sync.com subscribers, for example, get unlimited file versioning (read our Sync.com review).

Both music and video playback are available with Dropbox. While the Dropbox native media music player isn’t that great, there are several good media players that integrate with Dropbox, making it one of the best cloud storage for video options.

The biggest feature oversight with Dropbox is probably no private encryption. There are also several important features that require the Dropbox Professional, including file-sharing password and expiry dates. However, as we’ll see next, the cost of Dropbox Professional may not make it worth it.

Dropbox Plus isn’t horribly priced at $9.99 for 1TB if you pay month-to-month. That’s the same as 1TB of Google Drive storage. There are better deals out there, though, like 2TB for $8 with with pCloud (read our pCloud review).

We mentioned that Dropbox Professional gets you some useful added features. These include link passwords, 120-day versioning, Smart Sync and chat support. $20 a month probably won’t be worth those perks for most people.

There is a free Dropbox plan called Dropbox Basic. While the 2GB of storage you get is a bit stingy when compared with the list of best free cloud storage options we’ve put together, the plan is a good way to see what Dropbox is all about.

You can add to that 2GB of space, too, with the Dropbox referral program You get 500MB per referral, up to 16GB on Dropbox Basic. Plus and Professional subscribers get 1GB per referral, up to 32GB.

Ease of Use

90% - Excellent

Since 2007, Dropbox has stayed near the forefront of cloud storage when it comes to streamlined user experience. Nearly every aspect of the service, on desktop, browser or mobile, is about as polished as you’ll find.

The sync folder, which is simply a file system folder connected to the cloud, is the most important mark Dropbox has made on cloud storage when it comes to ease of use. We’ll talk more about sync with Dropbox in the next section.

When you install Dropbox on your computer, in addition to a sync folder, a taskbar icon is created. Clicking on this icon lets you quickly see notifications and access recent files.

Items in the Dropbox taskbar menu will let you launch your sync folder or open your Dropbox account online.

A settings wheel opens a nicely organized preferences view segmented into tabs for ease of navigation. This view is where you’ll go to throttle sync bandwidth, setup a proxy and manage selective sync, among other things.

The Dropbox browser experience is likewise excellent, with plenty of whitespace, few distractions and familiar controls like drag-and-drop and search to manage your files. Navigation options down the left margin let you jump between views called “home,” “files,” “paper” and “showcase.”

The home view shows files that you’ve starred and those that you’ve accessed recently.

The Paper view grants access to Dropbox’s integrated notes app. While not on the level of Evernote or OneNote, Paper works well enough.

Showcase is a new feature and only available to Dropbox Professional subscribers. It provides some handy share features like the ability to create presentations of your work and collect feedback.

Use the files view to get at your content. You’ll have new menu options on the left, including “my files,” “sharing,” “file requests” and “deleted files.”

My files will let you access, preview and edit the files in your cloud storage. The sharing tab lets you see what folders and files you’ve shared so that you don’t lose track of them. File requests does as you’d expect, letting you grant access to others — including non-Dropbox users — to upload files to your cloud storage space.

From the deleted files view, you can view any trashed files. Dropbox Basic and Plus users can recover files for up to 30 days. Dropbox Professional users have 120. As mentioned, the same durations apply to previous file versions if you want to rollback unwanted changes.

Dropbox was founded following an idea about ease of use, so it’s no surprise it gets it right with an experience that doesn’t require advanced technical knowledge.

File Syncing & Sharing

88% - Very Good

Every folder and file you store with Dropbox can be shared from your desktop, smartphone or browser. However, only folders have an option to grant editing permissions to others, so if you want to collaborate on a project, you’ll want to set up a folder for it first.

Each cloud object has a “share” button associated with it in the browser interface. Clicking that button opens a window within which you can input the email addresses of those you wish to share with.

When you share a folder or file, a link pointing to that file is generated. Rather than email this link, you can copy and distribute it manually, too, on social media, work chat or wherever. Keep in mind that anybody with this link can access your content, however.

Dropbox Plus subscribers don’t have any options to further secure sharing, which is one of the service’s biggest drawbacks. If you’re willing to pay twice as much to subscribe to Dropbox Professional, you can add password protection and expiry dates to your links.

These are both features you get for free with Sync.com and pCloud, however, both of which cost less and give you more storage, too. Check out our article on Sync.com vs Dropbox for some more comparisons.

Dropbox does provide a “sharing” view to see what folders and files you’ve shared. Without link expiry dates, this is the best way to manage your sharing to make sure you don’t leave a link active that shouldn’t be.

Dropbox also includes a “file request” feature, which lets others load files to a set folder on your account.

Its sharing features are a bit run-of-the-mill, but Dropbox’s approach to sync is, in our opinion, the best in cloud storage right now. We’ve heard some complaints about reliability, but that’s occasionally true of all syncing services — and Dropbox gets fewer complaints than most.

One of the keys to Dropbox’s success in sync is that it maintains multiple datacenters around the U.S. Niche competitors don’t generally have the instructure to compete, which can mean bottlenecks that slow service and other issues.

On top of that, Dropbox seems driven to maintain a technological edge when it comes to sync with features like block-level file copying. This method of processing files means that when you make an edit, only the parts (blocks) of the file that changed get synced across your devices.

The approach saves time by not copying the entire file all over again. Among cloud storage services, only Egnyte, Amazon Drive and OneDrive (for MS Office files, anyway) have also made the move to block-level file copying (read our Egnyte review and Amazon Drive review for more on these two services).

While sync is critical, it stores files both on your hard drive and in the cloud. If you’re looking to save space on your computer, you’ll want to turn it off. Dropbox lets you do that with selective sync.

By default, all folders in your Dropbox sync folder are also stored on your hard drive. Turning sync off on your hard drive will cause them to disappear in your sync folder, meaning they’ll no longer be accessible on your hard drive.

Dropbox Professional subscribers get an advanced form of selective sync called “Smart Sync” that lets you turn synchronization off for a folder and still see it in your sync folder. A red “X” over the folder will tell you it isn’t being synced.

It seems like a minor tweak, but Smart Sync is extremely useful if you don’t want to be continually hopping between your computer file system and Dropbox to locate files. We fully expect other cloud storage services to follow suit.

Speed

85% - Very Good

File copying speed is crucial to a fluid sync experience. To see how Dropbox performs, we conducted a few upload and download tests using a 1GB test folder made up of different file types.

These tests were conducted over a WiFi network from SE Asia. Our internet upload and download speeds at the time of the test were clocked at 10 Mbps and 22 Mbps.

Here are the results:

First Attempt:

Second Attempt:

Average:

Upload Time:

16 minutes

16 minutes

16 minutes

Download Time:

6 minutes

6 minutes, 30 seconds

6 minutes, 15 seconds

Your own sync speeds will be different according to your internet connection and location, particularly if you’re in the U.S., where Dropbox is located. However, these results are consistent with good results from other services we’ve tested.

As mentioned, the use of block-level file copying will keep files moving in faster after that first upload.

If you find for some reason that Dropbox is slowing down your computer, you can throttle sync speeds from the taskbar icon preferences menu.

The use of throttle shouldn’t be needed for most, however, since Dropbox handles sync so well.

Security

65% - Decent

Dropbox has been at the center of some controversy when it comes to security, including the theft of 68 million user passwords in 2012 — an incident that wasn’t fully reported until years later.

The lack of quick action was probably the most egregious part of the incident on the company’s part. The data dump itself wasn’t technically a breach of the Dropbox cloud, but the result of a Dropbox employee reusing his password a few too many time, resulting in the theft of a project document.

Additionally, the stolen passwords were also scrambled, although about half were hashed using SHA-1, a weaker algorithm that Dropbox was phasing out at the time.

You can read more about the steps Dropbox takes today to keep your passwords safe in this surprisingly informative write-up on the subject by the company itself.

Dropbox, along with several other tech companies, also found itself implicated in the PRISM scandal, a secret NSA surveillance program used to scour consumer data to gather intelligence about threats to the U.S.

Whether or not Dropbox was or is now actively involved, though, is unknown; leaked NSA slides merely indicated Dropbox as “coming soon,” and Dropbox has always denied involvement.

What is a fact, however, is that Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, was appointed to the Dropbox Board of Directors in 2014 to much public outcry.

The crux of this outcry was that Rice had previously advocated warrantless wiretapping and oversaw Stellar Wind, another NSA surveillance program launched post-9/11 that included data mining of the emails, telephone calls, banking records and internet activity of U.S. citizens. At the very least, it all sounds a bit fishy.

Being mostly pro-privacy here at Cloudwards.net, we generally recommend services that offer zero-knowledge encryption, a type of encryption where only you hold your encryption key and neither your cloud storage company nor the NSA can unscramble your files. Check our best zero-knowledge cloud storage suggestions.

Dropbox Encryption

Dropbox doesn’t offer a zero-knowledge feature — not even for an exorbitant price — but the company does implement the more basic cloud security measures we would expect. This includes both in-transit and at-rest encryption.

That’s good, but take note that upon arrival at the Dropbox data center, your files are decrypted and their metadata pulled.

File content is re-encrypted using AES-256, the most commonly used encryption protocol. File metadata remains in plaintext on a separate server. While this metadata is put to good use indexing your files for faster access, for some it could present a security concern.

Dropbox offers two-factor authentication as a means of providing some protection against password theft. This feature was launched in 2012 in response to the password hack incident. Turned on, it will require that you use a special security code sent to you phone when accessing your Dropbox account on an unfamiliar computer.

Support

65% - Decent

Dropbox’s approach to customer support isn’t as thorough for a SaaS company of its popularity and pedigree as we’d like. The support portal itself is mostly well designed; most of the issues stem from actually getting into contact with Dropbox.

The support portal is searchable and full of useful articles. Categories include “photos and video,” “security and privacy” and “sharing files and folders,” among others.

The articles themselves are reasonably straightforward and not bogged down in unnecessary detail. The only miss is an absence of embedded tutorial videos, although Dropbox does have a YouTube channel.

When you can’t find the answers you need, you can make use of Dropbox’s active community forum, ask Dropbox a question on Twitter or contact a support representative.

For most customers, email will be the usual support channel. You’ll need to use a Dropbox support form to get email support, which is poorly designed with text boxes that are too small for effective communication.

We sent a test question to Dropbox to check email response time, and got a reply back in just over two business days.

That’s not fast, but that email was also sent from a Dropbox Basic account, which has an expected response window of 72 hours. Dropbox Plus and Professional subscribers are supposed to receive priority support, meaning a 24-hour window.

Dropbox support is only available Monday through Friday, however, so you’ll need to factor that into the equation.

Dropbox Professional subscribers also get access to Dropbox live chat support, also available Monday through Friday.

The lack of 24/7 support for all subscribers aside from Dropbox Enterprise users is disappointing. Google Drive, by contrast, provides 24/7 live chat support for all customers.

The Verdict

For those that don’t mind overpaying a little and don’t need more than 1TB of cloud storage, Dropbox Plus provides maybe the fastest and most reliable sync available today. If you don’t mind overpaying a lot, Dropbox Professional adds Smart Sync, better link privacy, better versioning and several other features.

The reality is, though, that while Dropbox has several hundred million users, many of them may be better off looking elsewhere. For productivity, Google Drive has Dropbox beat. For security, file sharing and overall value, Sync.com and pCloud are both better options.

If Dropbox starts making some of those “extra” features Dropbox Professional subscribers get available on Dropbox Plus, we’ll reconsider our stance. For now, while we respect the much of what Dropbox does technologically, before you subscribe, we’d advise checking out our best cloud storage guide to find the ideal fit for your needs.

Thanks for reading. Share your own thoughts on Dropbox, below. Let us know what you think we missed, too.

Support

Misc

Dropbox Review

The grandaddy of cloud storage may be falling behind.

The service that made cloud storage pretty much, Dropbox still hasn't fallen victim to the usual trap for trailblazers, offering speed and ease of use. Its security leaves much to be desired, still, though, and it's a bit too cozy with Big Brother if you ask us. Read our Dropbox review for the detai

48 thoughts on “Dropbox”

Dropbox was the first cloud service I had used..Till now Dropbox is waking up when my PC wakes up..I have tried other cloud services too,but nothing is simple as Dropbox…I have 5.5 GB space on my free account..and everyone in family uses Dropbox…That’s the power of simplicity…

Dropbox is amazing guys! It’s probably the best for business or a proffesional photographer.

Dropbox offers amazing features, and especially the BIG 2014 changes and updates made it to be the one of the most cheapest cloud storage ever! 1TB for 9,99$/month. And new feature Dropbox launched, is password lock for files you share!

However, in security, Dropbox is good, but nothing more.
Dropbox is NOT going to take a war, if a company would be requesting your account’s files for legal procedures to take against what you did, so dropbox would simply say “oh hey, yeah yeah sure take this users 850GB copy files”. Why? you’re saying why i say this way? it’s because it’s their REAL face!
They are a cloud company that don’t want to get in a trouble if a illegal activity is monitored on how you’re using the cloud. Example, if you got illegal files that is copyright protected, and you upload to your cloud and share, they will easily see your file, with the MD5 Hash control (i think they are using MD5 hash, or another thing similar to MD5).
Dropbox uses Amazon S3 servers, which are NOT NSA Proof!
Dropbox uses SSL Only during File transfer. In the Cloud, it’s easily read-able.
IF someone has Access to Amazon S3 servers, they could easily read and see your files (well, it’s pretty hard since Amazon has tons of TB in that cloud, so will there be low risk of your files getting revealed). For Bussiness, Dropbox definitely is a NO!
Low security, non-encryption on server-side.

Unless you mark your files as “share”, dropbox wont use their system scanner, to scan illegal files. Yup, dropbox has a system that maintains the scan feature, if any suspicious is found, it will get redirected to the Dropbox staffs for manual scanning procedure to decide whether it is legal or illegal.

Simplicity of Dropbox is Very good! very simple! they made it as simple as possible which is very easy to learn and manage files.

Speed of Dropbox is really good too! Well, it can’t beat Google Drive’s speed (which MAXED my speed, i got shocked, because no any cloud provider maxed out my 100mbs upload/download speed). Dropbox has good speed, i am serious, it’s really good for personal use. Dropbox lowered their price, which made them marked in the “Affordable clouds” section (well so in my list anyway).

Their Mobile app is super-easy and super-simple. However, it lacks some features that other cloud privders mostly gives, anyway, Dropbox is very proffesional cloud company.
Their Windows software is really bad guys, because it is copying your cloud to your local harddrive without even warning you about that, which in result causes bandwidth overcharge issue (if you have a Internet which has a limited bandwdith usage). I think that function is customizable to your preference.

Overall guys, Dropbox is very good (if we exclude the security) for the price.

I have had Dropbox for over a year now after a colleague initiated its use. I love it! My storage is at 17GB thanks to friends joining me. I can access my current projects (letters I’m writing, homework, etc) no matter where I am, from any computer.

I’ve been using Dropbox for several years. My Dropbox folder is my default folder for Microsoft Word. So all of my Word files automatically go to Dropbox. One of the features I especially like is that Dropbox retains multiple versions of my files. So, for example, if a template file is corrupted through user error, I can easily restore the original version. Likewise when a crucial file gets deleted, I can easily restore it. Another feature I value is the ability to share a file so that I can provide a link to the file to anyone I want to share it with. That person doesn’t even need to have a Dropbox account. For example, suppose you need to provide an updated file periodically to a group of people. Instead of emailing the file to them, you can just provide the link. Then each time you update the file the link will automatically point to the updated version of the file.

If you cancel the $99 subscription, make sure to go to your bank account to cancel too. They will just keep charging and there is no number to call and emails to support are ignored (as you can see from complaints on their user forum on the topic of ‘billing’

I’ve used Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, and Google Drive, but Dropbox is by far the fasted and most reliable in terms of speed and synchronisation. I’ve had a lot of trouble with the other apps where they take forever to synchronise.

I have found Dropbox service to be very inflexible. I think the website is more difficult to use than is necessary. One has to do through too many steps to figure out the various pricing plans. It is also very difficult to get to a point where you can choose to cancel your trial service. I feel totally duped by trying their trial service and the inflexibility to work with me to determine the best service for me at a reasonable price.

I have found Dropbox service to be very inflexible. I think the website is more difficult to use than is necessary. One has to go through too many steps to figure out the various pricing plans. It is also too many steps to get to a point where you can choose to cancel your trial service. I feel totally duped by trying their trial service and the inflexibility to work with me to determine the best service for me at a reasonable price.

Wow, is Rolo ever an asshole! I hope he’s just a random internet jerk and not an actual employee of Dropbox.

I have never done business with a company that makes it so difficult to get simple support. I signed up for their $750 business service specifically to keep separate my business photos and files from my existing personal travel photos. I was very careful to set up a separate email account — everything I could think of to keep them separate because I wanted to share files with a major client.

As soon as everything was set up on my new business account, I open it up and see……all my personal photos from my other account. WTF??? Exactly what I was so careful to avoid was right there in front of me.

So….after a very long time of trying to find the secret decoder ring that spelled out a tech support number, I finally reached DropBox, tried to get it all straightened out and after hours, ended up just frustrated enough to tell them to forget it, just cancel the whole damned order and refund my $750. They actually did that immediately. That was last June (2015).

Guess what I found when I signed on to my bank card account today (May 31, 2016)? A new $750 pending charge from Dropbox. Seriously, you’re going to hit me for an auto-renew charge when I’m not even a customer and haven’t been for a year?

So, before Rollo the jerk decides computers and the internet are not my strong suit, you should know that I make my living pretty much exclusively handling things online. I can call Pruvan, I can call Quick Books, I can call Basecamp and get help immediately from any of them. There is no other company I’ve dealt with in business that makes communication such as nightmare as does Dropbox.

**More fun trying to find help from Dropbox: the kicker of this whole sorry experience: all my personal photos that were migrated into the now-deleted business account: gone. Can’t find them anywhere. Thanks a lot, Dropbox.

If you even imagine Drop Box as a last resort back-up of a real back-up, forget it.

Drop Box pretty much destroyed what had been a useful; library of some 450 albums. It ripped apart every single compilation album (SXSW 2016, for example), spewed a few across the library as individual albums and then crammed 450+ tracks into an “Unknown Artist” extravaganza album from which it is impossible to extricate them. This, in spite of the fact that in every case the individual track information including artist and album name appear in Drop Box’s own information.

But that’s not half bad compared to the 60 or so albums that still appear in the library (album art shows up) but have one track instead of, say, 12. The other 11 tracks are just: gone.

Several of my text documents received the same treatment.

Add to that the hours and hours and hours of restoration time, and floppy disks begin to look pretty advanced.

This is true. Dropbox is _not_ a backup system. For backups there are other tools and it needs a different backup strategy or/and some tools which providing this (CrashPlan, TrueImage,…).

It can be a nightmare if a file was locally deleted or corrupted and it’s synced with all devices. If you don’t know the file and the latest working version, you have a big problem.
Dropbox (and most other cloud services) are no backup tools and also no replacements for a real version control system.

So never use Dropbox and similar cloud services to backup your music library, documents, eBooks, photos etc. It’s good for sharing and collaboration with other people but not for backups.

Hi Alison, I recently had this happen to me too. I am curious if you were able to resolve the issue with the charge? I cannot afford the $750 bill that they stuck me with. Any insight will help greatly!

I agree. It said 30 days free trial so I’ve become 1 year subscription because it save more money than monthly charge. I was stupid they charge $99 right away and never refund back even I cancel subscription within hours. The Reason of cancel is that the storage has 1TB but I can’t upload more than 150GB so I sent tech support but didn’t get any answer soon so I tried to search. My hard drive unused space is only 150GB and I can’t upload more than that.
It is completely not useful. Bad service and tech support (still didn’t get any answer from couple of days ago). extremely bad company

7/10/16
Complaint to Dropbox-Unsavory behavior!
I originally liked Dropbox being able to email my collection of pictures to my friends and family with a simple link click. But recently you started to make people create passwords to what end I didn’t know and now it becomes clear, people are telling me they are receiving email that their boxes are full and need to pay to upgrade. I am the one who is paying to control the content they are receiving so this has become a despicable scam to shake people down for money, I am shock and embarrassed by the lack of integrity by your company. You should gently ask if they would like to buy an account. Right now this is causing me harm as people do not want to open any Dropbox email from me. I am going to look for another company that’s honest.

I followed the steps to cancel my subscription and then was charged another monthly fee weeks later. I wrote customer service and they said they could not refund the monthly charge. When I reviewed the canceling process again, I learn that you had to cancel twice and the second time the canceling button was transparent. It appeared as already pressed or activated. “Keeping the subscription” was a blue button. The way dropbox set up downgrading to Basic feels like they trick you into keeping the Pro version. More tech savvy people may catch on to this easily. Less tech savvy people such as myself can be confused or make errors with the canceling process, for it is not simple or user friendly. It feels unethical as to how they set it up. And support/customer service was unwilling to allow for human error as a result of how they engineered the canceling or downgrade process. Support particularly with Ned felt sterile and robotic. Ned did not feel like a live human being. Then he recorded the issue as resolved when it was not resolved. The solution was forced or mandated by Dropbox’s representative named Ned. He did not listen. He did not understand. He just kept saying the same repetitive answers. Dropbox would not allow or Ned would not allow communication with another support person or reopen the issue. It felt like a dictatorship. I highly encourage boycotting Dropbox and using Google Drive instead. It is very important we, the people, discourage businesses being runned and operated this way from surviving. I and 2 collegueges used Dropbox because of a project I initiated. I will not use Dropbox again due to it’s unethical business practices or recommend it to other colleagues. Dropbox’s business practices and Ned’s support are deplorable! ~ Faith E. of MA, USA

I see that G.L. posted in August and might not read this, but it may be helpful to other readers:
1 888 414 8124 IS NOT A DROPBOX SUPPORT NUMBER! It’s a scam. You will have the same experience as G.L. had—a nasty guy that sounds like he’s from India who’s tries to get your card number.
There is no phone number to reach Dropbox tech support unless you are a so-called Business Plan customer. Even if you paid for Pro, you will still have to wait two or three days to get a response, if you get one.

Severe safety issues. Dropbox has security holes big as an elephant, and no loss-restore. Your DB account can easily be taken over and deleted by an unauthorized third party, even by accident. There is no safeguarding back-up solution, no way to restore your account. All your pics and documents are forever gone. And the DB tech team will just say “no can do” before they stop responding at all. I’d recommend you stay away

Dbox is good until…..I have used them for many years. I liked them until they just stopped supporting XP based computers. This means the DROPBOX system STOPPED working…I would be ok if they just stopped supporting the service with XP. When windows stopped supporting XP, my computer still worked. This was not so with Dropbox. It just stopped working, no warning, no email warning, no phone call…it just stopped. What kind of company would do this move? They have lost my business, I am going to google drive, you should too before it is too late and you can not get access to your files on their server.

I don’t think that CrashPlan fits this category. It’s a cloud and local backup tool and works different than Dropbox so it makes not so much sense to compare this both.

Anyway, Dropbox is still the big player because of it’s easy usage and the features if it comes to sharing of files. Dropbox allows to share a complete folder and it’s intelligent enough to automatically make a zip archive if the user with the shared link likes to download a folder. The pro version adds some more interesting features like passwords for links.

Dropbox uses a special strategy and uploads only partially changed chunks if the file is already in the cloud. This makes the upload often very quick. If the file is already somewhere in the cloud it will also not uploaded twice, Dropbox compares this with already uploaded files.
With my testings with Google Drive and One Drive, Dropbox had the quickest uploads.

Because it’s the leading cloud platform nearly all apps supporting Dropbox. This can be interesting for some special apps on mobile devices like cloud music players or photo galleries.

The downside.. yes, with 10€ it’s not the cheapest platform and the competitors don’t sleep. They offering often more features in different departments, for example the online working on documents with Google Drive.
So IMO Dropbox is still the king if sharing of files, integration with other apps and syncing over different devices is needed. Not to mention that the syncing client works like a charm and IMO better then Google Drive, OneDrive etc.
For better encryption, more features there are better cloud providers.

I loved Dropbox until I tried their trial version for my workplace. They automatically charged my card $750.00 on the second of the 32nd day, and would not refund my money. POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE, terrible on a human level, and NOT WORTH THE TROUBLE.

Hi Jennifer,
The reason people like Dropbox is that it generally works well and is convenient. HOWEVER, should you have any problems with Dropbox, including tech support and billing, chances are that you will end up hating it and the people who work there.
You can do some looking around to see how many people have nightmarish stories about Dropbox.
Also, don’t try to get any help at their users’ forum. If you post something at all critical of Dropbox, some bizarre creatures called “super users” will respond by attacking and attempting to discredit you. After I read some of the complaints and responses, I realized that there was no point trying to get help there.

My elderly Aunt has a recurring charge of 9.99 on her credit card. She has only ever had one email account, and DropBox has no record of that. Without the email address on the account, there is NO WAY to cancel, or even to contact their support team. The only resolution left was to block all charges from the vendor. After seeing how badly this company provides (or does not provide) customer service, it is VERY easy for me to not recommend that the state government agency I work for ever use their service. There are many other cloud based storage solutions that have actual customer support.

Tech support at Dropbox is basically non-existent. I had no problems for years, but recently I added my Dropbox account to a new computer. The files were too large for the C drive, so I moved them to a different drive. By doing that, somehow I removed my own access to all my folders and all of my files disappeared from Dropbox. Luckily – I had them all backed up, but otherwise I would have been utterly out of luck because after over a week of constant email – they have done absolutely nothing to help, and their emails are condescending in tone and aggravating. I cannot recommend them. I would suggest looking elsewhere for file storage and file sharing.

I have had a free DB account for years now and decided to use it for digital downloads for business but needed to find out which business plan would work for my needs. I ended with “Amanda” chat and she wanted my email and phone number first and I said I already have an account and gave the name. I asked why she needed the info before I find out if their plans will do what I need first. Then she says ok then gives me a link to business plans and ends the session. Wow that was rude. I then go to the link and they want to start up a chat but they say that guy is busy. I am thinking that DB is hard core sales and from many of the complaints here it sounds like they run a sloppy pushy ship. I will stay with Google Drive until I can find a better business alternative. I am glad I found out about all this before I gave them my credit card. That was a close one.

The first surprise I’ve had with DB was that files shared with me by other people count toward my storage when these files already, logically, count toward their storage. So if someone decided (just like they did) to share large files in their paid account with me, my modest box will fill up on day one. How naive of me to think otherwise.

I’ve just spent 11 days playing ping pong with Dropbox customer support and my issue is still not resolved. I own a business account. I expected their customer service to be OK. It’s total crap. I get copy and paste answers. I requested my ticket to be transferred to another rep and the rep refused. I can hardly believe it. If customer service is important to you, avoid Dropbox at all cost.

DO NOT SIGN UP FOR DROP BOX. THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE IS PATHETIC!! I signed up for a prepaid Plus account for a year, they double charged me. I contacted customer service and they downgraded my Plus account to basic without my consent! I’m filing a complaint as a fraud. No pride and not reliable with incompetent people.

I do not recommend to a pay for dropbox service. It is too easy for syncing computers to erase data. I ended up with a whole file structure with no documents in the folders due to having some issues with a computer when syncing. I requested to close my account and a refund but dropbox would not give any refund and I was left with 6 more months of my annual fee just wasted on a site that did not do what they said they would. The customer service was also terrible. I was told my data was not retrievable. The worst thing was I paid for around 2 years to store data that was not there. It wasn’t until I did a search for some documents that I realised they were gone. Dropbox is not a company I would trust to store my data.

Perhaps dropbox used to be good, but not after the recent update! It sucks, it’s no longer convenient & no longer user friendly, so unless dropbox changes back to normal – don’t waste your nerves & energy on this bs!

Cant stand the weakness of onscreen prompts, but most annoyed that the free account has no way to judge the size of your folders and shared folders.

Annoyed that folders shared with me count against my quota.

I have probably 100 meg max files, but Dropbox thinks I am over my quota. I have no way to see what is making them think this.

Price of upgrade is high, and shouldn’t be needed since I don’t really need more than a gig.

Much about the navigation and options are counterintuitive

– to see other file properties, click on the column heading for one of the presented attributes. In the rest of the world and in the rest of dropbox, this is “sort by” action. But one secret column uses it to change the display without any indication. Weird.

– Want to see your total space usage? There is no menu for this. You have to know to click on the picture of yourself to find a background menu. In that menu, click on a tab “account” Then you can see it. Who designs menus like this?

Hi Gromit, if you’re still using Dropbox, check out Qloud+. The dashboard can tell you exactly how much storage space you have left, as well as the Insights tab will help you find which files are taking up the most space, so you can maximize your storage. You can also connect your Google Drive and One Drive accounts to get more free storage space. http://www.qloudplus.com

Dropbox is a failed technology. Difficult to use. Files do not show up unless someone sends you a link even if you have rights to the folder. HORRIBLE I have spent too much time trying to make this awful program work for me.

Dropbox took £750 from my bank account in October 2016 when I thought I had used their free service to transfer. Self recorded tape for an acting job. They sent me notification of this the next day which I did not open as I presumed it was a scam. It was only when I got my bank statement nearly a month later that I realised what had happened. I immediately contacted them and pointed out that this was an error and there was no way a one man business needed this service, whatever this service was because it this dat I don’t know or understand what I was supposed to have purchased.. I got a catagorical no refunds possible reply from Jay…no surname. I then offered to pay for the month I had had the service and would like a refund for the outstanding 11 months, again Jay said no refunds…. my union Equity think this was misold to me under the Online and distance selling for business legislation. I replied to Jay.. saying that I now wanted a complete refund or would persue this matter in a small claims court. My next reply came from Benjamin ..no surname…saying he had thoroughly reviewed my case and they had a no refund policy.
It is now 5 months later…I am still furious and will start proceedings against them this week, there are no adresses on their site but I gather the English office is in 2 Riding house street, london W1W 7FA.
Will let you know what happens, I hate this organisation….

We closed a business, and found out that we had a Dropbox account on “autobilling” with a $99 yearly auto renew when we received our credit card statement. Although we had not logged in for nearly six months (since the business closed), it’s Dropbox’s policy to refuse any auto renewal charges however recent the renewal charge was. They could have charged us for one month, but chose to hit us for the full year. When I tried to “chat” with them on their online “chat” window, as soon as she found out it was a complaint she promptly ended the chat session. Their customer handling is horrific. Had this have been handled properly, I would likely have gone to them for future business needs. Not anymore. There are many choices for cloud storage these days. They think they can mistreat their customers, but it will catch up with them. AVOID! You have many other choices! Meanwhile, I can highly recommend “Hostmonster”. We had the same situation with them and they immediately refunded the entire amount. I will be using them again, and already know I’ll have the need for another website.

When removing an old user and adding a new one, something almost everyone has to do. we could not invite the new person. We followed the instructions to the letter.

My main office person could not be included in our group. For two weeks this went on and the only response we could get is that they were working on it. They made us add new users and then they would take them off of our billing or give us any credit.

“Your Dropbox is almost full” is the message you will get 10 times a day. Dropxbox is about causing micro stress in your busy day-to-day office life. Completely insensitive to your desire for serenity.

I am going on month 4 of trying to resolve the billing issue. There is NO way to contact them except for the on-line chat which goes NO WHERE!
According to the employee reviews…they love the food there. Guess they are too busy stuffing their fat little faces rather than answer an email(no replies) or phone call (always goes to voicemail).
Signing up with Oracle, they have humans who answer the phone!

BUYER BEWARE!! actually FREE TRIALER BEWARE!! So I agreed to the 30 day (so-called) Free trial for basic personal dropbox to back-up our home pc’s. I understood that after 30 days, the charges ($10-$12/mo) would begin. Not long after, all of my documents ( about 10 years worth) dissappeared completely from my pc! On day 27, I received an email titled “Dropbox Business Account Upgraded” Thanking me for my UPGRADE? And listed the following;
Amount: $750
Licenses: 5
Account space: 3072 GB

WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT SCAM COMPANY WOULD DO THIS? To a new customer, using a free trial? Do Not Use Dropbox. They settled, out of court, a class action lawsuit in CA for this very same thing. They bought off the plaintiffs for 2 mil. and are continuing the same practices. Dropbox stipulated in their settlement and in their new user agreement for new customers that there could be “No more Class Action Lawsuits” against them. The biggest of the complaints was the way they do not clearly inform the “free trial” victim of what they have pre-planned in the fine print. Also failure to adequately warn the new customer of the ridiculously high fee they will charge “out of the blue” on day 27! I immediately began the process of trying to cancel everything and not pay the fee! But Dropbox support does not wish to help those who are in my position. These Guys Are Shady!!! They are using scam tactics and Dropbox should be penalized instead of the unsuspecting potential new customer!!

Dropbox Review

The grandaddy of cloud storage may be falling behind.

The service that made cloud storage pretty much, Dropbox still hasn't fallen victim to the usual trap for trailblazers, offering speed and ease of use. Its security leaves much to be desired, still, though, and it's a bit too cozy with Big Brother if you ask us. Read our Dropbox review for the detai

Joseph Gildred

A technophile with a love for words, Joseph Gildred utilizes his degree in comparative literature and background as an information technology analyst to ponder the future of human ingenuity. Not one to sit still for too long, Joseph joined the team because cloud technology and hopping from place to place go hand in hand. He has roots in Belgrade, Maine.